Tech

The Trump administration weakens car fuel efficiency standards : NPR

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The Trump administration announced Monday it’s scaling back how fuel efficient American carmakers need to make their fleets.
The Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards set average fuel economy levels for carmakers. The revised rules, which were finalized Monday, will now require carmakers to make their new passenger car and truck fleets up to 1% more fuel efficient each year, aiming for an average of 34.9 miles to the gallon in model year 2031.
This is down from Biden-era rules, which required an annual 2% increase in fuel efficiency with a goal of most vehicles getting, on average, 50.4 miles to the gallon by 2031.
The rationale: affordability. Administration officials argue that fuel efficiency technology is expensive, and has helped to drive up the cost of vehicles. They estimate that scaling back the standards will shave about $1,300 off the sticker prices of new cars.
“This administration is delivering relief to families and reviving the beating heart of American manufacturing,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy in an online statement announcing the change.
President Trump weighed in over the weekend on Truth Social: “These new Standards will take the waste out of building cars in America. That means LOWER PRICES, saving families thousands on a new, beautiful, and safe car.”
Climate advocates and auto industry observers say the rules change is another step in the Trump administration’s efforts to roll back Biden-era climate policies — including cutting the federal tax credit for electric vehicle buyers, delaying federal dollars for a nationwide EV charging program, and striking down federal waivers that let California set its own strict pollution regulations.
In a statement emailed to NPR, Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Transport Campaign at the Center for Biological Diversity, wrote that rolling back the standards would increase gasoline usage and pollution, “costing consumers at the pump and at the doctor’s office.”
“Trump is tanking sensible mileage standards at the worst possible time for consumers, who’re getting hit with sky-high prices at the pump,” he continued.
According to AAA, the national average price for gasoline today is close to $4.50 a gallon, and for diesel, a gallon is hovering close to $6.50, just short of last week’s record high.
Easing CAFE standards will hinder the industry’s realignment toward more fuel-efficient and electric vehicles, said economist Sue Helper, who studies the auto industry at Case Western Reserve University. “It’s very bad in the long term, because it slows progress,” she said. “Then we make our auto companies less competitive. We give them less practice in making the cars that both Americans will want in the future and that the rest of the world will want.” After all, American carmakers hope to continue selling their cars in foreign markets that may have stricter emissions standards. And a future presidential administration could change the rules again.
A legacy of the 1970s oil shock
CAFE standards have been part of the auto industry for decades. In 1975, during that decade’s great oil supply shock, Congress enacted rules that encouraged carmakers to make their fleets more fuel efficient in an effort to reduce Americans’ dependency on the Middle East for oil.
Since then, the national conversation about fuel efficiency has changed; the U.S. is now the world’s largest oil producer, and many regulatory changes have instead been driven by concerns about climate change. Since the early 2010s, the fuel efficiency requirements for passenger cars and light trucks have consistently risen.
In practice, the Biden-era standards meant carmakers needed to make electric vehicles to balance out their gas guzzlers — otherwise they were subject to a fine.
But the Trump administration dropped that penalty last July as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, effectively defanging the Biden-era CAFE standards. In December, the White House proposed scaling them back altogether. Soon after, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) opened a period of public comment.
In its final rule announcing the change, NHTSA also said it’s eliminating the ability of carmakers to trade credits amongst themselves for making electric vehicles — a part of the Biden-era CAFE Standards that Republicans often criticized. This rule allowed automakers to buy credits from EV manufacturers to offset making less fuel-efficient vehicles. This helped them meet their CAFE targets.
Will easing CAFE standards make cars more affordable?
In announcing the new change, the administration said lowering the CAFE standards will make cars cheaper.
“Instead of allowing manufacturers to design and produce vehicles they believe their customers will want and need, while spreading real-world fuel economy improvements across their fleets, the system has increasingly led manufacturers to try to fit square vehicle pegs in round classification holes to force the adoption of technologies that do not meet the demands of American families,” stated NHTSA in the final rule. “All of this adds inefficiency and cost — pushing even more consumers out of an already unaffordable new car market.”
“It’s true that the price of new cars has gone up quite a lot,” says Helper at Case Western. But she contends that much of that is not because of fuel economy standards. Instead, she says, it’s because vehicles have gotten larger, they’ve faced tariffs and supply chain issues in recent years, and they are often loaded with extras like infotainment systems.
A Consumer Reports analysis from 2023 found that between model years 2003 and 2021, vehicles got about 30% more fuel efficient, but attributed the rise in prices to an industrywide shift toward expensive SUVs, rather than from using more fuel-efficient technologies.
And when it comes to the monthly costs of a new car, there are external factors beyond a carmaker’s control — like the cost of an auto loan, which is affected both by the Federal Reserve’s benchmark lending rate and by an individual buyer’s credit score.
“One of the cruxes of vehicle affordability right now is the average monthly payment getting jacked up, because interest rates are so high,” says Ellen Hughes-Cromwick, who spent much of her career as Ford’s chief global economist and now studies clean energy as a senior visiting fellow at the center-left Third Way think tank.
Plus, a cut in the sticker price might eventually be offset by spending on gas. If vehicles are less fuel efficient, that means drivers will need to fill up at the pump more often — which is especially salient in a year of high gas prices due to the war in Iran.
Will carmakers still make fuel-efficient vehicles?
For now, American carmakers are stuck in a kind of jam.
On the one hand, Helper said, a rules change that makes it easier for them to sell trucks and SUVs is “good in the short-term, because they make a lot of profits making these giant vehicles,” though they are not as popular outside of the U.S.
This new move “allows the U.S. more of a playground in this protected little Galapagos of an ecosystem where no one else is wanting to compete,” Helper continued.
But the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade group representing car and light-truck manufacturers that sell vehicles to the U.S. and that includes automakers such as Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, praised the move. “We’re still reviewing the final rule, but NHTSA made the right call to better align fuel economy standards with the law and current market conditions,” said John Bozzella, president and CEO of the alliance, in an emailed statement to NPR.
“The standards finalized under the previous administration effectively required a switchover to electric vehicles that was out of step with market realities and customer demand. Today’s final rule is an appropriate course correction,” he continued.
But in the long term, the CAFE standards change risks hindering American carmakers in a global industry, said Hughes-Cromwick. ” The future of the industry is all about the transition to electric vehicles,” she said. “The rest of the world is marching on in this transition to EVs. We have a very powerful competitor in terms of the Chinese electric vehicle industry.”

Tech

Microsoft is being suspended from program to apply for green cards for skilled foreign workers, Vance says

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s administration is suspending tech giant Microsoft from a program to apply for green cards for workers who come to the U.S. to live and work using an H-1B visa as it accuses the company of fraud.
“If you do the math, for every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one and a half foreign indentured servants,” said Vice President JD Vance in a White House news conference announcing the decision.
The H-1B program has long been a target of Trump supporters who say that the program undercuts American workers and is rife with abuse.
H-1B visas are meant for high-skilled jobs that are difficult to find American workers to fill. Technology companies are the biggest users, with nearly three-quarters of approvals going to workers from India.
Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Vance announcement came one day after Trump’s Republican administration launched another broadside against international students and their ability to work in the U.S.
The Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday proposed a $70,000 fee for international students seeking to work in the United States. The proposed rule would require schools to pay the fee for every student who participates in the Optional Practice Training program, known as OPT, which allows students to work in jobs related to their major during or after their time in school.
Vance also called out universities that he suggested were abusing a program to allow international students to come to the U.S. These temporary visas, called J-1 visas, allow international visitors to temporarily come to the U.S. for work and study exchange programs. Vance singled out nine universities that he said merited further investigation for J-1 visa fraud, saying they used the program in greater proportions than their counterparts.

Tech

New iPad Mini Rumored to Have 60Hz OLED Display Ahead of Launch

Ahead of the expected imminent launch of the new iPad mini 8, word out of Asia suggests that the device will feature a 60Hz OLED display rather than a ProMotion 120Hz display.
The information comes courtesy of a hit-and-miss tipster running the account “yeux1122” on the Korean Naver blog. “There have been mentions of 120Hz in some overseas reports, but the domestic production quantity has already been confirmed to be LTPS at 60Hz,” the tipster wrote. “That’s it.”
It’s not the first time we’ve heard that OLED iPad mini won’t share the same ProMotion display as the iPad Pro models. In July, the same leaker claimed they had been told by a source in Apple’s supply chain that the unreleased iPad mini is equipped with a low-temperature polycrystalline silicon (LTPS) backplane hybrid OLED panel clocked at 60Hz.
Apple’s ‌iPad Pro‌ models feature two-stack low-temperature polycrystalline oxide (LTPO) OLED panels‌, which makes the display capable of dynamically adjusting its refresh rate between 10Hz and 120Hz (aka ProMotion). In contrast, LTPS OLED panels are usually paired with fixed refresh rates – such as 60Hz, 90Hz, or 120Hz – and are typically dimmer than LTPO panels.
If the leak is true, it’s likely to disappoint iPad mini fans. Previous reports have not been clear on whether the iPad mini 8 will feature a higher refresh rate than the 60Hz LCD display used in the existing iPad mini 7. Given that the base iPhone 17 uses a 120Hz ProMotion panel, some would have believed it was reasonable to expect the same on the first OLED iPad mini. That said, the iPhone 17e goes to show that Apple is still in the 60Hz OLED business, so it might not consider the iPad mini to be a big enough market to justify the more advanced panel technology.
There are at least some other new features of the new iPad mini 8 that we can expect. It should come with a faster A20 Pro chip, FaceTime camera relocated from portrait to landscape orientation, a redesigned speaker system, and a water-resistant design.
The new iPad mini is expected at some point in October, but Apple has not yet announced a launch date. Apple will unveil some new home products on Tuesday, October 13, according to a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. However, MacRumors’ sources indicate that Apple plans to hold a separate event in the final week of October, so the iPad mini 8 could arrive then.
Related Roundup: iPad mini
Buyer’s Guide: iPad Mini (Don’t Buy)

Tech

Andrew Garfield quits ChatGPT after playing Sam Altman

The actor who stars as the OpenAI CEO in Luca Guadagnino’s “Artificial” admits that after working on the film, his “mistrusting of the technology” has deepened.
“I got a bit scared,” he told Variety after the San Francisco-set movie made its world premiere at the New York Film Festival this week. “It feels like the people who are encouraging us to use the technologies don’t exactly know its capacities themselves. That feels a little irresponsible, to me personally.”
“Artificial” focuses on the five-day power struggle that temporarily led to Altman’s ouster as CEO, but it also traces the rise of artificial intelligence and its great promise — and potential threat — to our daily lives.
Garfield stars alongside two fellow Oscar nominees — Yura Borisov (“Anora”) as idealistic OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever and Bay Area native Monica Barbaro as Mira Murati, the company’s former interim CEO — as well as Oscar-winner Mark Rylance as Geoffrey Hinton, “the Godfather of AI”; and Ike Barinholtz as Elon Musk, an OpenAI co-founder who turned into as bitter rival of Altman.
“Luckily, I don’t need (ChatGPT) in my life in the same way that other people in other industries might,” Garfield said. “As an actor, I was using it as a kind of fancy Google for some research purposes. I know that it’s not what it’s meant for.”
But perhaps the biggest compliment Garfield has received is from Altman himself. The tech mogul told Vanity Fair that he marveled at the actor’s replication of his walk and other mannerisms.
“That’s a very generous thing for him to say,” Garfield told Variety. “I imagine it must be incredibly strange and surreal to be a young man, as he is, to know that there’s a film where a version of him is being depicted. I feel quite sensitive and compassionate towards that. I’d personally feel really vulnerable and probably angry. That’s just me. He seems very chill about it.”

Tech

Neanderthal woodworking was far more advanced than we thought, new study shows

Neanderthals did far more with wood than burn it. A new study of 597 wooden remains and imprints from Abric Romaní, a rock shelter in Capellades near Barcelona, shows they made weapons, tools and household items from it. They may have built parts of their living space too. The finds span roughly 62,000 to 40,000 years ago and come from 16 archaeological levels.
For decades, stone tools shaped our picture of Neanderthal technology. Wood rarely survives, so a big piece of their material culture went missing. Abric Romaní changes that. The study appears in Science Advances and is led by Palmira Saladié of IPHES-CERCA and Universitat Rovira i Virgili. It’s the first full analysis of the wood recovered during more than four decades of digging at the site.
Other European sites already showed Neanderthals worked wood. What sets this one apart is the time depth. Researchers can follow wood use across thousands of years and many visits to the same spot. Wood turns out to be a steady part of daily life there, not an occasional resource.
So how did wood last this long? Calcium carbonate built up around it. When the wood rotted away, it left natural molds in the travertine rock. These molds hold the original shape with great precision. Some are detailed enough to show the internal tissue structure of the wood.
The same layers also hold hearths, stone tools and animal bones. That lets the team study how Neanderthals organized their activities, handled fire and managed resources in one space.
Most of the 597 pieces are trunks, branches, twigs, roots and piles of firewood. The team picked out 13 pieces that Neanderthals made or used. They include domestic objects, structural parts, tools and weapons.
Two wooden spears came from Level R. One measures 2.45 meters and fits the shape of a thrusting spear, built for close range. The other survives at 1.99 meters and has a pointed tip with clear signs of deliberate shaping. Very few wooden weapons from the European Paleolithic survive. Schöningen and Lehringen in Germany are the best known sites.
Level P produced an odd object. It was carved from a single piece of wood, with a clear handle and a thick, pointed end, so it looks like a mace. Tool marks show someone shaped it on purpose. Nobody knows what it was for, and no known object matches it.
The wood record goes beyond weapons. The team found what look like bark containers or trays. They also found crossed poles that might have formed part of a raised platform for preparing food. One straight wooden piece stretches 5.10 meters. It could have been a structural element, or a way to alter the living area. Piles of firewood show that Neanderthals used different methods to collect, carry and store fuel.
“Neanderthal technology extended far beyond stone,” says Josep Vallverdú of IPHES-CERCA.
The site has a long research history. Systematic excavations began in 1983 under Eudald Carbonell. Dr Palmira Saladié, Dr M. Gema Chacón and Dr Josep Vallverdú now direct the work. Their decades of careful digging let researchers read the wood alongside hearths, bones and stone tools. Together, these finds restore a part of the Neanderthal world that most sites have lost.

Tech

Samsung flags $80 billion profit on AI boom, highest quarterly for any tech company

The world’s largest memory chipmaker estimated an operating profit of 107.4 trillion won ($80.17 billion) for the July-September period, slightly ahead of an LSEG SmartEstimate of 106.1 trillion won.
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The forecast marks Samsung’s fourth straight quarter of record operating profit, underscoring a deepening global memory chip shortage as AI infrastructure investment outpaces supply growth, which has driven chip prices up sharply.
Analysts have also recently trimmed their forecasts due to the sharp appreciation of the South Korean currency, which reduces the value of dollar-denominated overseas sales when converted into local currency.
“The market’s focus has shifted to whether the sharp earnings growth that started a year ago would be sustainable,” market analyst Kim Seok-hwan at Mirae Asset Securities said.
Analysts expect profit in the fourth quarter to grow 8.2% from the previous quarter, slowing from 20% sequential quarterly growth in the third quarter, with chip price growth abating.
Market research firm TrendForce expects conventional DRAM contract prices to rise 10% to 15% in the fourth quarter from the preceding quarter, much slower than a second-quarter surge of roughly 60%.
Third-quarter revenue would likely rise 127% to 195 trillion won from a year earlier, Samsung said.
The company will release detailed results, including a breakdown of earnings by business division, on October 29.
BIGGER-THAN-EXPECTED MOBILE LOSS
Memory chips are expected to account for the bulk of the earnings improvement.
Prices have soared due to the tight supply of conventional DRAM and NAND chips as well as growing demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM), essential ⁠for processing vast amounts of data for AI applications.
But the memory chip boom presents a challenge for Samsung’s other businesses, particularly its smartphone and ⁠consumer electronics divisions, which face mounting pressure from higher component costs.
Samsung’s mobile business posted a larger-than-expected loss of more than $1 billion in the third quarter, analysts said.
Meanwhile, Samsung’s contract chipmaking, or foundry, business is expected to remain loss-making because of the burden of fixed costs and still-low utilisation rates, analysts said.
Investors said they would also be closely watching for details of Samsung’s shareholder return policy during its earnings call later this month.
($1 = 1,339.5700 won)
Updates shares in paragraph 5, adds analysts’ comments in paragraphs 7-8, 15 and 18
Reporting by Heekyong Yang, Joyce Lee and Hyunjoo Jin; Editing by Sonali Paul

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